October 13, 2007 / Sports / Williamsburg–Greenpoint–Bushwick / Perspective / Beside the Point

Baseball was made in Brooklyn

By Tom Gilbert

for The Brooklyn Paper

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I will never forget my first time in Yankee Stadium, watching one of those tactical battles in which both managers repeatedly pinch-hit and change pitchers. The spectators were thinking along with every move, until Billy Martin decided not to bring in a certain reliever. The upper deck murmured its surprise. The crowd was actually reacting to a move the manager DID NOT make.

As both Mets and Yankees fans drown their disappointment in their liquid of choice this October, it may console them to reflect on the fact that New York fans are different from fans in Atlanta, Cleveland or LA. By different, I mean more knowledgeable, more passionate — better.

This is because New Yorkers, especially we Brooklynites, have been watching baseball longer than anyone else.

You may have read that our national pastime was invented upstate or across the East River in Manhattan. Baloney! Baseball was born, in the truest sense of the word, right here.

It is true that the first club was organized in the early 1840s by a group of Manhattanites. Called the Knickerbockers, they published the first rules. That is why most historians credit them with having “invented” baseball.

One problem, though, is that the Knickerbocker game was, in the words of a contemporary sportswriter, “tediously dull.” There was no base stealing, fast pitching, balls and strikes, or home runs. The other problem is that nobody watched it. Knickerbocker baseball was like a modern country club sport — played for fun and to justify a few post-game drinks.

A decade and a half after the Knickerbockers, baseball was taken up by the young men of Brooklyn, then a city of about a quarter the population of Manhattan; the idea was to beat the New Yorkers at their own game.

Baseball clubs sprang up in Brooklyn Heights, Williamsburg and Greenpoint. They created networks of youth teams that fed talent to the adult clubs. They made the game more athletic by adding the stolen base, the bunt and the position of shortstop. Even though amateurism was the rule, star players were paid under the table.

In 1858, Brooklyn challenged New York to a three-game series and narrowly lost. It became an annual event and Brooklyn never lost again.

Jim Creighton figured out how to throw a rising fastball, violating the spirit, if not the letter, of the pitching rules, which called for the ball to be served gently to the batter. Another Brooklyn pitcher, Candy Cummings, invented the curve ball. That pitch became the game’s central weapon.

Meanwhile, a Williamsburg leather merchant named Cammeyer had an idea.

On a lot bounded by Harrison Avenue, Rutledge Street, Lynch Street and Marcy Avenue, he built the world’s first enclosed baseball park, the Union Grounds. He let in Brooklyn’s top clubs for free, but charged spectators 10 cents admission.

Paying fans meant that this, and later ballparks, had to be surrounded by a fence. When a batter, whose identity remains unknown today, hit a ball over that fence, he authored the first real home run.

Baseball was now a business. After only a few months, the clubs demanded a share of the gate; soon the first national professional league was formed. The people of Brooklyn paid to see baseball because they identified with their team, whether it was Brooklyn versus New York or two neighborhood teams fighting for bragging rights or an Irish team playing a WASP team instead of cracking their heads in the street. Brooklyn fans bought scorecards, tobacco cards and newspapers that printed the first box scores.

The energy that Brooklyn put into baseball helped sell it to the rest of America. From 1858 until well into the 1870s, Brooklyn remained the center of the baseball world. Midwestern clubs came here to find a second baseman. Teams from Manhattan played home games at the Union Grounds because they drew bigger crowds.

In 1877, a major league club from Hartford moved there to boost ticket sales.

The Union Grounds closed in 1889, and the Dodgers have come and gone, but Brooklyn’s passion for baseball remains undiminished. It is a cliché that baseball is perpetuated by fathers teaching their sons; but in Brooklyn, this game has been passed down from great-great-grandfathers.

No wonder baseball has such deep roots in our borough, its one true home.

Tom Gilbert is a writer and historian who lives in Greenpoint.

The Kitchen Sink

Our pal, Garrett Oliver, brewmaster at the Brooklyn Brewery, has signed on as the Editor-In-Chief and leading author of the forthcoming “Oxford Companion to Beer,” which will be published in 2011. Those British beer-swillers couldn’t have picked a better man. Oliver has created many award-winning beers during his nearly two decades of brewing and is a veteran of more than 500 beer dinners and tastings in eight countries. We can’t wait to toast our pal when he brings over a case to our DUMBO offices. …

Town Square and the McCarren Park Greenmarket are inviting kids to PUMPKIN DAY in McCarren Park on Saturday, Oct. 13, from 11 am–1 pm. Come and pick out your own pumpkin and decorate them. There’ll also be other arts and crafts, balloons and cider. To ramp up the fun factor, there’ll also be a bluegrass band playing at the Greenmarket that morning! …

And don’t forget that Town Square’s annual children’s Halloween parade and party is Sunday, Oct. 28 at 4 pm. Call (718) 609-1090 or e-mail info@townsquareinc.com for more information.

©2007 Community Newspaper Group